Wowhead's Patch 5.0.4 Guide

5.0.4 is live today and we have an extensive guide to everything new! While there's no new raids or gear in this patch, many things will keep you busy. Class abilities, talent trees, and glyphs have been drastically changed, so it's good there's a month before Mists of Pandaria to familiarize yourself with the changes! If achievement-hunting is more your thing, all achievements are account-wide in 5.0.4, as well as many mounts, pets, and titles.

Warchief Garrosh, obsessed with assuring the Horde’s supremacy over Kalimdor, launches an all-out attack against Jaina's island home of Theramore. Though valiant Alliance defenders rush to repel the sudden onslaught, they’ll soon find themselves unprepared for the terrible scope of Garrosh's true plans…

This Scenario will become available in the weeks leading up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria on September 25.

AOE Looting

Area of effect looting comes to World of Warcraft with this patch. After killing a group of enemies in close proximity, when you loot one of their corpses, the loot window will include items from all of the nearby corpses for which you have loot rights.

In some zones, players are now able to form a group with other players from a select pool of realms.

When a player is in a zone that is set as a “cross-realm zone”, in addition to seeing other players from their native realm, they’ll also seamlessly see (and be able to play with) players from other realms.

Players will always be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their native realm.

This functionality will be enabled for a limited number of realms at first, and will be granted to additional realms as we near the release of Mists of Pandaria.

Classes: General

All classes have been updated with a new talent system, improved abilities, and spells (accessible throughout levels 1-85). Your character's talents have been reset.

Many old talents have been converted to specialization abilities.

Druids now have access to a fourth class specialization: Guardian.

New spells are now learned automatically. Class trainers are only needed to change talents, glyphs, class specialization, or to utilize the dual specialization feature.

All characters now take 40% less damage from other players.

Currency Conversion

Valor points have been converted to Justice points, and Conquest points have been converted to Honor points.

Neither of the resultant currencies (Justice and Honor) have an enforced hard-cap at this time.

Players are no longer able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses drop Justice, and arenas are closed).

Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest are available for Justice/Honor.

Items

Spell Penetration has been replaced by PvP Power on existing items.

Head enchants removed

Enchants that modify the gear in your head slot have been removed from the game. This includes older head enchants of every type.

Relics, ranged, and thrown items

The slot in which ranged, relics, and thrown items were previously equipped has been removed. All weapons should now be equipped in the weapon slot.

Ranged weapons, including wands, have been adjusted to be more powerful.

Ranged weapons no longer have a minimum range.

Professions

The glyph system has been updated. Many class glyphs have been added, altered, or moved to different glyph types.

Prime glyphs have been removed.

Chef’s Award and Dalaran Cooking Award have been removed. Existing awards have been converted to Epicurean’s Award.

Quests

The cap for daily quests has been removed.

There is no longer a displayed count of daily quests completed.

User Interface

There is a new user interface for your mounts and pets.

Character creation screens have been updated.

Buffs have been consolidated in the UI.

New roll results frame added. This new feature can be accessed by clicking the word "[Loot]" in chat, or by typing "/loot".

The PvE queue frames have been unified. You can now queue for dungeons, raids, and other queue-able content in one handy place.

Vendors now offer item filtering.

Spellbooks have been updated to reflect changes to core abilities, and now include a brief overview of specializations.

The Dungeon Journal has been expanded with information on all pre-Cataclysm encounters.

A new help system has been added to many frames. You can toggle this on and off by clicking the "i" button in the upper left corner of the frame.

Mac

Mac OS X 10.5 is no longer supported.

Added full support for Retina displays.

Added support for game resolutions that match Mac screen aspect ratios.

Switching between Windowed and Fullscreen display modes should be faster.

A “Help” menu has been added, so that players can quickly navigate to support pages.

A menu item that allows players to copy system information to the Clipboard has been added.

A menu item that reveals various game files and folders in Finder has been added.

New Scenario: Fall of Theramore

In 5.0.4, Garrosh Hellscream will launch a full-out attack on Theramore and Jaina Proudmoore, determined to conquer all of Kalimdor. Your character will take part in this dramatic conflict that has tragic consequences for all.

From September 18-24 only, players can queue up at 85 for Theramore's Fall, a new scenario. The scenario can be later completed by level 90 players in Mists of Pandaria. The Theramore event will not begin on patch day, August 28th, in contrast to the staggered pre-Cataclysm event.

New Talent System and Class Changes

In 5.0.4, the talent system will be radically changed. Instead of 31-point talent trees, each player gets 6 talents total. There is an option between three talent choices every 15 levels.

Many talents that were considered mandatory have been added into class specializations.

You do not need to visit a trainer to learn new abilities: you only visit them to change talents and specializations.

With so many new abilities introduced this patch, Blizzard took the time to add amazing spell graphics for each class. Check out our pastpreviews.

We've had a Mists of Pandaria talent calcuator up and running hours after the overhaul was first announced at BlizzCon 2011. Constantly updated, it reflects all the new talents, class abilities, specializations, and glyphs. Check it out!

We've provided links below to our talent calculator, Blizzard's summaries of class changes, as well as detailed guides to all specs our friends at Noxxic have put together.

Each specialization learns a passive effect that should cause that specialization to favor the corresponding Presence for general use.

, as well as the new talent Death Siphon, both cost a Death Rune, meaning that they can only be used when one of your runes has been transformed to Death.Check out our Wowhead class preview with armor models, screenshots of spell effects, and more.

Poisons are divided into two categories, Lethal (Deadly or Wound Poison) and Non-Lethal (the rest), and you may have one poison of each type active at once.

Many abilities that used to be restricted to a single specialization are now talents and available to all specializations; so you can have a Shadowstepping Combat rogue or an Assassination rogue with Cheat Death.

Dagger speeds have been normalized such that the niche of the “fast dagger” intended for the off-hand no longer exists. Any dagger should be fine to equip in either hand.

Totems no longer provide long-term buffs. Some of the old passive effects are now innately provided by the shaman.

Totems instead have short-term situational benefits. In light of this the totem multidrop UI has been removed, though all totem spells are now sorted under draggable elemental flyouts in the Spellbook.

Stances also now share a single action bar, rather than changing your action bar, and abilities are no longer restricted by stance.

In addition, the benefits of the stances have changed considerably, with allowing the warrior to gain some Rage from taking damage, Battle Stance making the warrior gain additional Rage from dealing damage, and Defensive Stance focused on survivability.

Inscription and Glyph Changes

Prime Glyphs are removed. Many of these abilities have been turned into class abilities.

Your character now can have 6 glyphs at once, not 9.

Minor glyphs in 5.0.4 are designed to be lighthearted and provide your character with fun vanity effects. Blizzard felt minor glyphs were too dull and wanted to do something different with them. Check out our past visual previews of the new cosmetic glyphs.

Many old glyphs will be changed in 5.0.4 and your old glyphs will convert into new ones. Others, like monk glyphs, will require 525+ Inscription to learn.

Many professions do not have changes, but Inscription has a few low-level weapon plans in addition to all the glyph changes. We suspect that this will help transmog more than leveling players, as the weapons use rare models.Key to the Planes (Recipe: Key to the Planes). First seen on Chief Engineer Lorthander.

New Buffs and Debuffs

As part of the talent tree redesign and ability revamp, buffs and debuffs were reworked so all classes had a relatively equal amount of raid utility. Be sure to check out Zarac's guide, Mists of Pandaria Buffs and Debuffs, for a well-organized list.

Account-wide Achievements

Most pets, mounts, titles, and achievements will be account-wide in 5.0.4. This will greatly help players who have meta achievements in progress across several characters. If an achievement can be completed across multiple characters, like a meta-achievement, it will have a blue bar in the heading.

A title will be acquired on an alt when they reach the required level to obtain it. It looks like realm-first titles will be account-wide too!

Achievements will be shared at the battle.net level. This means that characters on linked accounts will share these items and accomplishments.

Expensive and multi-seat mounts were originally intended to be character-specific. They were changed during beta to be account-wide, so all characters can benefit from your Reins of the Grand Expedition Yak. Full list here.

Item Changes

The ranged weapon slot is removed. There is simply just a weapon slot. Players will have the option of equipping, for example, a staff or a wand, a bow or a polearm. As a result of this change, ranged weapons will receive stat boosts to be more powerful and minimum range has been removed. However, ranged attacks can now be dodged.

Expertise will convert to spell hit for casters.

Spell penetration is being removed.

Dungeon Changes

Three leveling dungeons were revamped in the latest patch: Ragefire Chasm, Scholomance, and Scarlet Monastery. While sadly some items like Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade aren't available anymore, there's updated stories and new achievements to farm. Check out the links to see video and screenshot previews, the Encounter Journals, new loot, and what's exactly changed!

Heroic versions of Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance will be available in Mists of Pandaria.

General Changes

AoE Looting: This will greatly speed things up in 5.0.4! You will be able to loot all nearby mobs by clicking on one corpse. For Wowhead Client users, don't worry, we'll be able to accurately display drop locations and percentages still.

Battle Tag Support: Battle Tags are similar to Real ID, but without your name attached. You can invite, add, and remove friends with Battle Tags just like you do with Real ID, but with more privacy. This system was first introduced in Diablo III.

All Races Available in 5.0.4: Players do not need to purchase a specific expansion to unlock several races, all races are available with Classic WoW. For example, you do not need Cataclysm to roll a Goblin. Read the blue post here.

Blacklisted Battlegrounds: Players can blacklisted two battlegrounds at a time--removing them from their random queue. Simply click the thumbs-down icon by a battleground's name and you won't have to deal with your least favorite map ever again.

11th Character Slot: This is the first expansion where the number of characters per realm has been increased to 11.

Cross-Realm Queueing: Players in under populated areas of the world such as low level zones will be grouped together within a select pool of realms. The natural flow of questing will be preserved but the zones will end up less sparse. For highly-populated areas like major cities, this won't be in effect. Check out the blue post describing the changes in more detail.

UI Changes

Spellbooks have been greatly changed: all abilities show up in tabs organized by spec, regardless of your characters chosen dual specs. In addition, there is a spellbook page talking about core abilities and changes for your class. New help prompts have been added to many portions of the spellbook, for users unused to the new format.

Pets and Mounts now have their own interface.

Buffs at the top right of your screen have been consolidated. Clicking on the buff icon will expand the window to show what buff types you have.

The Dungeon Journal now includes pre-Cataclysm encounters.

Vendors now filter items by class.

Helpful information toggle buttons have been added at the top left of window panes. Click on the "i" to have more information pop up.

A new roll results frame will provide more detailed information. Type /loot in game to see more information.

Character Creation Screen

New characters will show up on the preview screen in sample sets of high-level gear, instead of level 1 greys.

A bar has been added to the right side of the screen that allows you to visually browse all the customization options, such as hair and skin color.

The character creation screen has been changed to reflect the faction conflict instead of your race's homeland.

Comment by qwertydood

Resubbing for this as soon as the Battle.net account management servers are back up.

Patch looks epic!

EDIT: Also (this may have been asked already), is it possible to get the armor that's in the creation screen? They look like much higher quality looking versions of existing sets.

Comment by kobiashimaru327

on 2012/08/28 13:11:28

I am so excited to play my warlock now. She's just been sitting there, waiting...I might actually pvp with her! I am so excited for this xpac. I know a lot of people hate it, but they'll be playing right along with us. Blizz doesn't care what you say, haters...you're still paying $14.99 a month! :)

Comment by perculia

on 2012/08/28 13:15:19

I asked some Blizzard staff on twitter yesterday about the dungeon changes, since I was unsure as well. They replied that it was something to document in today's patch guide. However, the heroic mount drops aren't going anywhere yet and it seems like Theramore zone changes are delayed too.

I would also like the updated Nightslayer shoulders that rogue in the left character creation pic is wearing.

Comment by Whoisthiscook

on 2012/08/28 13:25:28

WOOHOO!

Comment by XanderGryphon

on 2012/08/28 13:27:05

I asked some Blizzard staff on twitter yesterday about the dungeon changes, since I was unsure as well. They replied that it was something to document in today's patch guide. However, the heroic mount drops aren't going anywhere yet and it seems like Theramore zone changes are delayed too.

I would also like the updated Nightslayer shoulders that rogue in the left character creation pic is wearing.

Thanks for the update. I have several friends who were very interested in farming the dungeons to get the items that'll be removed with the changes, and were worried about not having enough time to do so.

I'm going to feel rather horrible if I log in to find that the dungeons did in fact change after I told them all that they wouldn't be changing.

Comment by gnomerdon

on 2012/08/28 13:27:34

thank u for also uploading on offtopic otherwise i'd never read it.

i'm almost sold.

Comment by Ashelia

on 2012/08/28 13:30:56

thank u for also uploading on offtopic otherwise i'd never read it.

i'm almost sold.

It's an 'all forums' button. Sorry off-topic D:

Comment by Averos

on 2012/08/28 13:31:41

Blacklisted Battlegrounds = epic! :D

Comment by gnomerdon

on 2012/08/28 13:37:03

that certainly had a small negative effect on me. T___T

we weren't special after all!

but thanks for the upload!

Comment by OverZealous

on 2012/08/28 13:46:40

These just keep on getting prettier and prettier while maintaining the same level of know-all as before. Outstanding work.

Comment by Interest

on 2012/08/28 13:51:31

Almost done with my article. Zomg why did I take that nap D:

Edit: Finished. I love crazy long articles, especially when I wrote most of it in advance.

Comment by helenahandbag

on 2012/08/28 14:22:07

Anyone else think those Scarlet dungeon loot tables seem off? Why are plate items dropping in there? And agility/int mail, for that matter? I'm not complaining, mind you, esp. as a lot of those pieces appear to use artwork from the HoT dungeon sets (which will make them a bit easier to farm up once everyone's moved on to Pandaria). It just seems a little odd.

I'm also hoping there will be some way to get the armor preview sets on the character creation screen. So pretty! Must... transmog!

Comment by Irv384

on 2012/08/28 14:31:32

It looks like Blizz is finally taking a lot of common player complaints seriously and acting upon them to make improvements to the game! I can't wait for maintenance to finish!

Comment by edwordrules

on 2012/08/28 14:41:41

Human Warlock PvP *Sploosh

Comment by Interest

on 2012/08/28 14:44:07

Human Warlock PvP *Sploosh

Why can't I hold all these cc cleanses?

Comment by Rystrave

on 2012/08/28 14:59:05

I knew I should have gotten Tabard of the Scarlet Crusade before it was too late. I had it while leveling and never wore it so I sold it like 4 years ago. Too bad tabards are BOA... yet.